Shays: GOP convention rules favor McMahon

Neil Vigdor

Updated 5:54 pm, Saturday, May 12, 2012

Photo: Charles Krupa, Associated Press

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Former U.S. Rep Christopher Shays, R-Conn., right, and 2010 U.S. Senate nominee Linda McMahon, listen during a debate for the seat being vacated by U.S Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., in Norwich, Conn., April 19, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa) less

Former U.S. Rep Christopher Shays, R-Conn., right, and 2010 U.S. Senate nominee Linda McMahon, listen during a debate for the seat being vacated by U.S Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., in Norwich, Conn., April 19, ... more

Photo: Charles Krupa, Associated Press

Shays: GOP convention rules favor McMahon

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The state Republican convention hasn't even begun and there is already a floor fight. In dispute is the ballot process that will be used to determine who wins the party's endorsement for U.S. Senate.

A marathon affair in prior decades, every single delegate declared their allegiances to a particular candidate in a traditional roll call numbering more than 1,000 names.

The party has abandoned the practice in recent years, opting to go to a system where the heads of all 169 municipal GOP delegations read off a vote tally and turn in a card with the roll call of names.

Former Congressman Christopher Shays is no fan of the change, which his campaign argued will make it easier for delegates to get out of their commitments and favors rival Linda McMahon at the May 18 party convention in Hartford.

"We are disappointed that the McMahon campaign is once again against transparency in the convention process, and fought against each delegate voting, but we're not surprised," said Amanda Bergen, a spokeswoman for Shays.

A spokeswoman for McMahon, who is competing in her second GOP convention after winning the party's endorsement for Senate in 2010, affirmed the campaign's support for the process without engaging Shays. "We wholeheartedly support the rules as adopted unanimously by the rules committee," said Erin Isaac of the McMahon campaign.

Jerry Farrell Jr., the convention rules committee chairman, characterized the current system as a "happy medium" between ensuring that individual delegates have a stake in the process and expediency.

"I have to reach back to 1994 in my memory to when it was a delegate-by-delegate roll call," Farrell said. "I can remember that '94 vote going on for hours, literally to the point where people went out to dinner and came back from several hours away."

Unlike two years ago when the state GOP convention spanned two days, party leaders consolidated the proceedings into a single day this time.

"These things aren't done in a vacuum," Farrell said. "The party has all kinds of costs to put on a convention."

Farrell, who served as consumer protection commissioner under former Gov. M. Jodi Rell, said there was no lobbying effort by either the McMahon or Shays campaign regarding the ballot process.

"It's not the job of the rules committee to make the campaigns happy," Farrell said. "I think every campaign is going to want to write the rules to their satisfaction, but, at the end of the day, it's the duty of the party to be both fair and timely."

The same process will be used earlier in the day when party members endorse candidates for the five U.S. House races.

"We considered an individual roll call, but we felt there needs to be uniformity between the congressional campaigns and the U.S. Senate campaign," said Jerry Labriola Jr., the state GOP chairman. "It really came down to a matter of the time constraints of doing it that way."

The Senate balloting is scheduled to start at 7 p.m., with city and town delegations from the 4th congressional district announcing their vote tallies first in alphabetical order, followed by the 5th, 1st, 2nd and 3rd congressional districts. The head of each delegation, usually the Republican Town Committee chairman, will hand a vote card with the roll call of names to the convention secretary or deputy secretary.

Whoever receives 50.1 percent of the delegates present and voting, which is estimated to be 626 of 1,250 for Senate, will earn the party's endorsement.

For the first time in convention history, the campaigns will be able to track the votes of individual delegates by name in real-time via a website that is closed to the public. The mechanism will only be available in the Senate race.

The convention rules committee endorsed the innovations at its most recent meeting May 7.

"We all love a horse race to some degree, but we want to be able to see how the horses are progressing. Gone are the days of "smoke-filled conventions of yore," Farrell said. "We're not going to be there at 7 a.m. the next morning," Farrell said.

"We are thrilled with the website capability the rules committee has established and believe it will be a very useful tool over the course of the convention process," Isaac said on behalf of McMahon.

A video screen will display the running delegate count for everyone else at the convention.

"So, on balance, we feel that these enhancements will give the campaigns more information than they received in 2010," said Labriola, who became chairman in 2011. "At the same time, we want the general audience to know what the vote total is in real time."

The convention rules committee endorsed the innovations at its most recent meeting May 7.

"We all love a horse race to some degree, but we want to be able to see how the horses are progressing," Farrell said.

Gone are the days of "smoked-filled conventions of yore," he added.

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"We're not going to be there at 7 a.m. the next morning," Farrell said.